Uttar Pradesh is India’s most populous state and its western belt, essentially agrarian, has a significant Muslim and Hindu Jat population. There is a growing trend of vigilantism in this region that has seen the birth to several self-appointed radicalized Hindu fringe groups.
The Quint travelled to the heart of this region to unravel how these often violent vigilante groups function. We met their members, sympathizers, and young Hindus who are being trained and indoctrinated in this brand of religious extremism.
United by a deep sense of Islamophobia, they believe it is their religious duty to safeguard Hinduism from the ‘proliferation and onslaught’ of Islam. The recent threat by the Islamic State (ISIS) to take over India by 2020 has provoked these fringe groups to intensify recruitment and military training of Hindu youth that they rope in. Some of their recruits, whom The Quint met on camera, are as young as 9 years old.
It is not just the threat of the Islamic state, but several other agendas that drive their mission. For instance, young Hindu recruits are tutored about Love Jihad, an alleged conspiracy to increase the Muslim population - the allegation being that Muslim men lure young Hindu girls into marriage, only to abandon them or force them into prostitution after they bear children to add to the ‘Muslim’ population.
Since many Hindus consider the cow ‘holy’ and worship, the issue of cow slaughter and beef eating has also been a source of friction. The radical Hindu vigilante groups that The Quint met, believe it’s their religious duty to prevent cow slaughter and cow ‘smuggling’.
The insecurities of these groups have deep roots in the history of communal violence that this region has witnessed. Official statistics provided by the Ministry of Home Affairs show that communal violence in India has increased by 30 percent in the last decade, and western Uttar Pradesh continues to record the maximum instances of such violence.
The film ‘The Wild West of Uttar Pradesh - The Rise of the Radicalised Hindu Fringe’ - will be released in 3 parts, followed by a full length documentary, only on The Quint.
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